Although the very fact of the existence of the Pictish people on the territory of modern Scotland is fully proven today, information about their origin and way of life is fragmentary and not always reliable. Modern researchers in their research on this issue most often rely on the preserved records of Roman historians and a few archaeological finds dating back to the period from the turn of the eras to the 900s of our era. It was at this time, apparently, that the Pictish civilization flourished - one of the most mysterious peoples in world history. The earliest written evidence of a certain community of people called "picti", ie. "Painted" belongs to the Roman writer Evenius and dates back to the 297th year.
There are several versions of the origin of the Pictish, the most popular of them says that this ancient people originated in the Celtic tribes. At the same time, significant discrepancies were found between the Celtic language system and the dialect in which the representatives of the "painted" nation spoke. Moreover, the Pictish language, according to modern scholars, has no phonetic affinity with any of the known dialects in the Indo-European language group. This suggests that the formation of the Pictish community as a separate ethnic group goes back to even deeper antiquity, and the Pictish themselves are representatives of pre-Indo-European tribes that inhabited Europe long before the appearance of the Celts and other nationalities.
It is extremely difficult to judge what the Picts looked like at the present time. If in some historical documents they are described as tall, fair-haired blondes, in others they are called swarthy, short and black-haired. Evidence that has come down to us agrees on one thing - the Picts decorated their bodies with intricate bright drawings (possibly tattoos) and were distinguished by extreme ferocity and courage in battle. It was thanks to their belligerence that this, not so numerous people, kept the southern coast of Britain at bay for a long time, where they made constant predatory raids. There is evidence that around the year 360, armed forces of the Picts were able to penetrate inland, reaching London. There is a widespread version that Pictish warriors used to fight naked; there is no significant confirmation of this hypothesis,only the fact that there were no finds of any armor during excavations speaks in her favor.
Apparently, initially, the Pictish tribes that settled in the central and northern parts of Scotland were united in a kind of alliance to protect them from common threats. Closer to the sixth century, these unions began to represent something like state formations, eventually forming the so-called Kingdom of the Picts. The heyday of this formation fell on the seventh-eighth century, when the Picts managed to stop the attack on their lands by the Angles, a powerful ancient Germanic tribe, who at that time sought to subjugate the territories of Scotland. It is interesting that the succession to the royal throne in the state of the Picts took place through the female line; the reason for this approach to succession to the throne remains largely unknown.
The disappearance of the Pictish Kingdom is associated with the name of Kenneth the First, who in 843 was able to unite his state with the neighboring, no less influential, Scottish kingdom, created as a result of the merger of several Celtic tribes. The result of these actions was the creation of a new state entity known as the Kingdom of Scotland and the gradual assimilation of the Picts with representatives of the Celtic Scottish community.
Currently, a small percentage of the population of Scotland and Northern Ireland can be considered the descendants of the Picts, according to genetic studies. It is extremely rare, but they are also found in the territory of modern England.